Sunny had recognized the lecture Mari had received… how could he forget? She had been so good at softball, so strong… and then she had hurt her knee. After Sunny had holed himself in his room, searching for a passage of poetry one day, he’d gone downstairs to show Mari… and had overheard. Hiding behind the doorframe, afraid to show himself… until he had simply crept back upstairs.

Sunny was afraid of many things. The past, their present, the unknown…

And normally Mari’s presence at his back, her long strands of hair floating into view as she embraced him, would have sent him into a panic.

If only because he didn’t deserve to be comforted. He didn’t deserve her kindness at all. He had—

She couldn’t have known, and yet her words were a lifeline. Something he hung onto through their overlapped scoldings, one full of disappointment and the other abandon. His shaky hands reached up to grab hold of her arms, still wrapped around him.

“H-Help…” he could barely choke out the word. How wrong he was, to ask for help from his own sister, after he had- (and he knew this to be true, his father’s voice echoed it, skipping a few syllables, simply so the full Truth wasn’t there. Only for Sunny to know, like stabbing him through.